OnePlus X review: the best bang for your buck?

Chinese smartphone sorta-startup OnePlus (it’s wholly owned by Oppo) has been a bit of an oddity since it first burst onto the scene with its aggressive “Never Settle” branding and its dedication to not making money in its first two years. It recently announced the OnePlus X, a US$250 smartphone that represents OnePlus’s shot at the midrange smartphone market.

So how does it stand up?

Build & buttons

The OnePlus X handset is, to put it simply, damn solid. Its glass front and back panels feel great, although they probably make the thing a bit more fragile. Aesthetically, the phone has been compared to an iPhone 5 – albeit a larger one – and that comparison is apt: they’re both black rectangles with rounded edges. The beefy 5-inch screen has thin enough borders that it still fit comfortably in my hand, and it has enough heft to feel high-quality without being a burden.

The left edge of the phone, with OnePlus’s notification switch.

The OnePlus X’s button layout is similar to other OnePlus phones, with the power button and volume rocker along the phone’s right side, with its left side reserved for OnePlus’s rather unique notification priority selector, a three-setting switch that allows you to select whether you want the phone to pass along every notification, select notifications, or none at all when the screen is off and it’s in standby mode. In do-not-disturb mode, you can be sure the phone will stay quiet, which is a nice touch.

The X can support dual SIM cards or one SIM card and one microSD for extra storage, so you can take your pick there. It only comes with 16 GB of onboard storage, though, so unless you’ve got a great cloud solution or you don’t take many pictures, it’s likely you’ll want the microSD sooner or later.

Given its lower cost, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that the OnePlus X doesn’t have everything. Two of the biggest misses are NFC and a fingerprint sensor – the OnePlus X has neither. A little disappointing, but hardly surprising; OnePlus had to make some compromises to get a phone this good to cost so little. You’ll have to cough up US$329 for the OnePlus 2 to get your hands on its excellent fingerprint scanner.

Everything you get with the OnePlus X

Packaged along with the OnePlus X are a USB charger, a thin frosted-glass-style plastic case, a metal widget for poking the hole that opens the microSD/SIM card slot, and a screen protector that has helpfully been applied to the phone already (mine had a few small bubbles in it, but they were very easy to buff out).

Camera, sound, and screen

The OnePlus X comes with a 13 MP rear camera as well as an 8 MP front camera, and then allows you to view your visual creations on a 5-inch, 1080p screen. The display is looks quite sharp to me, but I’m coming from the less-than-full-HD iPhone 5. Whether your photos are sharp is another story, of course.

Performance

Software

Is the OnePlus X worth it?